American Society of Engineering Education Commends Graduate Student Melissa Lepe
April 28, 2025 - Anteater engineer Melissa Lepe was recognized with an Outstanding Graduate Student Award by the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) at the Pacific Southwest Regional Conference in April at Cal Poly Pomona. Lepe is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering working in the fields of engineering education and sustainable aviation.
The ASEE award commends graduate students who demonstrate a strong commitment to education in engineering-related areas. Along with scholastic excellence and engineering education research, awardees demonstrate positive contributions to service-learning projects as well as outstanding leadership in student organizational activities that support education.
“Beyond developing technical skills through sustainable aviation research, it was important to me to learn more about the educational component that came with this sector,” said Lepe, a first-generation student. “We often think about technical research and engineering education research as two separate things, but really, it is important to develop diverse engineers who think profoundly about the impact of their work and effectively communicate that with others. I think my experiences thus far have taught me how to be a better educator and mentor.”
Lepe earned her bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering at UC Irvine in 2022. As an undergraduate, she prioritized mentoring the next generation of Latine engineers by tutoring and participating in outreach programs. While working on her undergraduate degree, she noticed that many students did not have a strong grasp of engineering design tools needed for aircraft design such as MATLAB, Solidworks and data digitization methods. Lepe designed and created a set of education modules with examples to complement the aircraft design coursework. She presented this work in her paper, “Preparing the Future Aircraft Design Workforce: Filling Knowledge Gaps Using Engineering Design Tools” at the ASEE Annual Conference last year.
As a graduate student, Lepe tutors fellow engineering students through the Office of Outreach, Access and Inclusion. She works as a teaching assistant for a summer outreach program with her co-adviser Jacqueline Huynh. This year, Lepe will present another education research paper, “Unraveling Intersecting Hispanic and Latiné Engineering Student Identities to Understand Sense of Belonging at a Hispanic-Serving Institution” at the ASEE Conference in June.
In addition to her engineering education research, Lepe conducts research on the development of aircraft sustainability. She works on the design of data-driven methods to validate and improve modeling of advanced abatement approach and departure procedures for noise reduction for communities living around airports. Earlier this year, Lepe shared her findings and was cited as the first author for research analyzing the operational factors contributing to aircraft overflight noise variation.
Natascha Buswell, an associate professor and Lepe’s co-adviser, nominated Lepe for the award.
“Her identity as a Latina in engineering has guided her to her research and outreach activities and makes her an outstanding scholar,” Buswell said in her ASEE nomination letter. “Lepe’s professional goals include becoming an engineering professor, helping to illuminate the pathway for all Latine engineering students who come behind her.”
– Cassandra Nava
